San Francisco - Amazon has removed racist images that appeared on some listings for Apple AirPods and other headphones in the UK.
According to the Financial Times, the images appeared on Amazon UK site in search results for "AirPods" and "bluetooth headphones".
Some users went to Twitter to post screenshots of search results for "AirPods" and "bluetooth headphones" that appeared on the e-commerce site.
A racist hacked Amazon? pic.twitter.com/uh5ZGI9Yw9
— Mel (@Mxlvinnn) May 30, 2020
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/AmazonUK?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AmazonUKthis is my second message. Why have I had to endure such racist words on Amazon? From a seller who has more than 20k reviews on their products. How do you explain this to children? Its irresponsible that I’ve not had a response by this time! pic.twitter.com/9yjuFZ6BWM
— Iya Ayomide (@uoe80)
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/amazon?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#amazon #amazonprime #blacklivesmatter pic.twitter.com/rKBsDXCZ9M
— IG - TheBeauteBar.Co 🦋 (@PrettyTrapRae)
"Instead of photos of headphones, the search results showed images that contained the N-word," said the report.
The listings seemed to be limited to the UK site, and appeared on the pages of new Amazon sellers. The ecommerce behemoth requires third-party sellers to follow its content guidelines or risk having their accounts removed.
"Our store maintains content guidelines which third party sellers are required to follow," an Amazon spokesperson told The Verge.
"As soon as this issue was raised, we investigated, removed the images in question and took action against the bad actor," the spokesperson added.
Last month, five of Amazon's foreign websites were placed on a blacklist by the Donald Trump administration.
The e-commerce platforms in the UK, Germany, France, India and Canada were added to the "notorious markets" list.
Amazon said the move was politically motivated.